Yesterday I suggested that all environmental issues are fundamentally political in nature, not scientific. On that theme, here are two posts that underscore the problem with politics.
First, we get the government we elect. Which wouldn't be so bad except for the fact that the people who most want to govern are those least suited to it.
Second, everything in politics is in the language and the words that are used. Politics is not say what I mean, mean what I say and do it. Politics is say what will be heard, obscure what is meant and do what suits the purposes of those who have control: what can be successfully sold and imposed on others? How else can we explain a Human Rights Council for the UN where the worst offenders on human rights not only sit as members but dictate responses and shield abuses?
I have written about the situation in Dafur before: suffice it to repeat the basic message -- today it is Dafur, tomorrow it will be some other unfortunates. The problems of the world are not imperialist ambition from any one country. Rather they are the systemic indifference of those who know to acting on that knowledge in the service of those who are oppressed. When we fail to protect those least able to help themselves, we diminish all human experience. In that respect, the UN has no equal: it is failing humans in all nations.
Perhaps this is what equality means in UNspeak: the right of all people to be exploited in the name of political expediency everywhere.
